Growing Pains

Spring is such a wonderful time of year ... in most places of the country any way. It's a nice reprieve from the gloom and cold of winter, with the promise that something sweeter is just around the corner. For those of school-age it's a sign that they are finally about to reach the light at the end of the tunnel, the school year is almost over, and after the long and well deserved break, they will come back older, wiser, and with a completely new identity.

Do not be deceived though, spring comes with some difficult and trying moments. There will always be those random days when storms of various kinds pop up and leave you wondering if it really ever was spring at all, if the winter was ever over, and if summer ever will really come.

I find myself in a season in life much like Spring, despite the fact that the housing office gave me a ticket for excessive snow just last week (yes, I am still bitter).  A lot of changes are happening in my life, all of which I think will be for the better, and yet I find myself reaching, preparing, and waiting for the part that comes after summer .. the Fall. I know it's strange, but it's kind of the feeling that a Junior in High School gets the last month of the school year, the "I'm going to be a SENIOR" next year .. the change of identity that is inevitable with the fall, but requires the hard work during Winter and Spring.

I have realized several things about myself this last Winter, things that call for me to act in such a way that when Fall does come, I am ready to claim the identity that I deserve. While I realize I am being very vague, I think that many of us find ourselves in a position where we realize that what we settled for is not what we are destined for, and this realization demands action from us.

Professionally, I've realized that I'm not very good at being a paralegal. Not because I'm not good at office type work but I'm not good at office type non-work. My job has a lot of down time, and I've realized that a lot of office jobs have a lot of down time, and I am just not good at sitting there and pretending to work when there is no work to be done. It turns me into an angry psychopath, and nobody benefits from this transformation. I had thought about taking steps to find different ways in procuring income but kept coming back to the amount of pay I'm receiving at my job. It's definitely not anything extravagant but it affords me a comfortable lifestyle that doesn't require me to explain to Alex why I just HAD to buy that purse ... and those shoes ... and Oh, these super cute earrings ... and ... you catch my drift. However it did cause me to wonder if staying at this soul crushing job is worth the "things" I am able to buy. The answer, is obviously no, but it's different when you're faced with making the decision.

A couple opportunities have surfaced and I am excited about pursuing them this (literal) Fall. I am also excited with other things I've discovered I actually do want to pursue, but won't be able to realize just yet because of our geographic location (still waiting for the metaphorical Fall).

I feel blessed to have a husband who believes in and supports me so much that he refuses to allow me to be complacent, and reminds me that though spring is nice and summer is nicer, Fall will come for me and I need to be ready to claim the life that I desire and deserve.

I don't think that it's a big mystery why all these changes in my external and internal life are occurring right now. It seems only natural that change would come with (literal) spring, but also over Easter Weekend. The change that calls us to let go of all the things that the World tells you are necessary for a "good" life (i.e: a stable job, material possessions, etc) and pick up a new life in Christ. When Christ conquered death over 2000 years ago, He did not do it so we could live complacent lives that support worldly addictions. He picked up the cross so that we didn't have to. He picked up the cross so that we could pick up Life.

There are sins that are easy to recognize: adultery, theft, murder, jealousy, but there are also sins that are  more difficult to recognize. For me, it comes down to not trusting God to take care of the people I love, and to give me a more fulfilling life than what the "World" has to offer.

So this Easter I urge you to consider the sins you are holding onto that are holding you back from truly living the life that He has planned for you. When you come to the foot of the cross are you laying down  all your sins, and are you picking up the life that Jesus laid down for you or are you walking away empty handed?

"Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to gird yourself and walk wherever you wished; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will gird you, and bring you, where you do not wish to go." Now this He said, signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God. And when He had spoken this, He said to him, "Follow Me!" "

Happy Holidays!

I know. I've been bad. I ran off, got married, and just totally abandoned this blog. Well I figured with the holidays and the New Year approaching, a little status update was due.

The honeymoon was AMAZING ... actually, it was more than amazing, in fact it was so much more than amazing that I can't find a word adequate to describe how amazing it was so I'm just going to have to stick with the all caps AMAZING. Greece and Italy were beautiful, there was so much history, and it was quite the experience to be able to see so many spots that I have learned about throughout my schooling as a Philosophy major as well as places of biblical significance.

A particularly interesting thing to me was, apparently Peter the Disciple's bones are buried under St. Peter's Basilica, which is of course the catholic church in the Vatican City. The reason that this blew me away is that Jesus told Peter in the bible that he would be the rock that the church is built on. Now most people attribute that to the fact that Peter went around spreading the gospel and building up churches, which I also think is what Jesus was referring to, but I definitely thought it was interesting that the epicenter of the Catholic Church was LITERALLY built on top of Peter's bones. Crazy!

The food in both Italy and Greece were, of course, amazing, and we ate and drank ourselves silly as we ventured throughout those two countries.

When the honeymoon was over, Alex and I parted ways at the Philly Airport, and I went to CA and Alex went up to ND.(Side note: Alex and I have been together for over 4 years, have traveled all over the world together, and flown definitely over 10 times, each, in the last 2 years, and we have never flown a full round trip flight together. Military life.... am I right or what?)

My mom and I loaded up my car and we made our way to my next home for the next couple of years. We got to drive through beautiful Utah, and even got to drive through Yellowstone park which was an added bonus.

So what have we been doing since we got to Minot? Well I'll show you!

Alex learned how to mow the lawn. To this date he has mowed the lawn ... once. 

I made this halloween wreath to hang on the door, but ... 

... it flew away when all the snow and wind came shortly after we hung it up. 

I stood in the snow and got to watch the planes take off one particularly frigid afternoon ... 

 I've been buying my produce at a local co-op which has been pretty cool, since fresh produce can be kind of pricy up here. The problem with this website? They usually offer one produce item in bulk, which I am tempted every time to buy. Once they offered 48 pounds of cucumbers for $20(!) so I ... learned how to pickle and can! I am currently trying to eat 25 lbs of tangerines before Christmas.

I got a job at a law firm downtown (yup DOWNTOWN) as a paralegal, and I have learned: a) my boss is an avid hunter b) caribou, aka reindeer, are very big and  c) it is perfectly acceptable to have caribou heads mounted in a law office. 

I went to my first hockey game(GO MINOTAUROS!) and while Alex had been to hockey games before, this was the first time either of us had seen a tooth ice skating. 

We celebrated Channukah on the first night of Passover by making latkes, eating apples dipped with honey(wrong holiday but still delicious), watching "Eight Crazy Nights" and decorating dreidels.

... and finally, I saw my car read a negative temperature for the first time!

Well that's all for now folks! I want to wish everyone a very happy holiday season (another side note: I say "Happy Holidays" not cause I'm afraid to offend anyone who doesn't celebrate Christmas, I mean if you don't want to be Merry, it's your loss and you're an unmerry loser so I don't care, but because it's easier than saying "Merry Christmas and Happy Channukah and Happy New Year!" I would just hate for someone to mistake my laziness for political correctness.) and I hope that the New Year brings you more blessings and joys than you could have ever dreamed!

Almost there!

Well, we are about two weeks out from the big day and I thought that I would just take some time to talk about my feelings as I like to do from time to time. I mean after all, in a year, two years, maybe even in a month from now, I'm going to be the only person revisiting these pages so ... who cares what you think anyways!

A mere 15 days and I get to swear in front of friends, family, and God that I promise to take care of and love one person for the rest of my life no matter what. Well, lucky for me that's the easy part! The hard part is delivering the most fabulous wedding that anyone has ever seen!(ok maybe my expectations are a little high ... but you know ... reach for the moon .. or something) I wouldn't say that I have reached "panic mode" just yet, but I can feel it coming on. 2 weeks seems like it is so close and so far all at once and my perception of my list of things to do switches back and forth from manageable to overwhelming(which I guess is dependent on my perception of time, but that's a talk for a different day). Sometimes I do find myself in serious Bridezilla mode, but these days that mostly occurs on late nights when I'm working on the programs. I think that the best thing about the programs is that I got to buy a paper cutter! But that's it. I'd say about 20 programs in I began to question how important it actually was for guests to know who was who and what was going on. My vote is that it's not important at all, however I have already cut 500 pieces of paper into various shapes and sizes and so, I guess I must continue to assemble. But a word of advice, if you aren't absolutely positively sold on having programs and you're doing it yourself, pass on it, it's worth the reduction of your stress and anxiety. Or buy a paper cutter! Trust me, it's worth it!

I will definitely admit I moan and whine and complain to Alex about the wedding all the time occasionally, and how we should have just gotten married on the beach with our immediate families around us, but then I remember that if we had done that I wouldn't get to wear my dress ... and yes, my dress is worth ALL of this. :)

Other things I'm excited about: My flowers. They are going to be gorgeous and I can't wait to see the finished product!!!!! I am very excited that I get to incorporate my two favorite flowers into the bouquets and didn't necessarily plan it, but I'm really glad it worked out that way. I haven't quite figured out what I'm going to do with the flowers that I'm saving though. Any ideas?

All in all I think I'm in pretty good shape. It has been kind of tough planning a wedding while I'm in and out of town and without the groom, but fortunately I was able to make wedding planning my full time job(when I'm actually around) so that has definitely helped.

I am still excited for the wedding, think it will be a total BLAST, and can't wait to walk down that aisle and become Mrs. Kroll!

Let freedom ring!

I just had to ... I love this song...

ANYWAY ... when people other than Martina McBride think of the fourth of July, they think of barbecues, going to the beach, pool parties, and other fun things. For me fourth of July is always a painful memory, why? Because it is my little brother's birthday and every year, on fourth of July he would request that we go to Sea World, and so we drove to San Diego and back, through all the traffic, EVERY fourth of July ... and I HATE Sea World. Nothing about Sea World is fun and exciting for me. Maybe it's because I never wanted to be there in the first place, or that sitting around watching whales jump out of a pool doesn't quite do it for me, or maybe cause ... oh I don't know, we grew up 10 minutes away from the ocean and we could see dolphins doing the same exact thing in the ocean DAILY if we so desired, whatever the reason I am not a fan of Sea World.

Anyways, that was actually kind of a tangent. My little brother's birthday is tomorrow and he's turning 20. And he's going to Russia. And because he won't be around to celebrate his departure from teen-dom, we decided to throw him a little birthday celebration tonight:

In wedding news: I ordered our cake today! I am very excited for it, and I just kind of randomly picked designs for the cake, so let's see how it goes ... Regardless of what it looks like, I know that it's going to taste delicious, so everyone can rest assured of that. I also dropped off my dress at the tailor's, and it's a little nerve racking to not have it in my possession, but the tailor lives literally 2 blocks away, so there's always that. Other than that, I'm just taking care of little things here and there like designing programs and oh yeah, getting scuba certified! I went to my bachelorette party this weekend and I had a blast! We went to San Diego, and did some snorkeling and it definitely whet my appetite for exploring the world "under the sea"(of course I had to work in a Disney reference there). 

Here is a picture of me with my bridesmaids:  

ALSO: Alex and I have secured a house on base! It is such a blessing that we got offered a house because there are many people who arrived around the same time and they did not get as lucky as we did. I met a girl who had to wait 9 months to get a house! We definitely got lucky. I will be leaving shortly after I return from our honeymoon, and needless to say, I am very happy about that. Knowing when I'm going to be there, definitely makes the waiting process much more bearable. The next step is finding a job, so please pray that I get a good one! 

Alright folks, that's all I got for tonight!

Only the Best Come North!

Yes ... I am here. I have arrived in Minot, ND, though not permanently and it's ... well cute. The city is small, it has a population of about 40,000 people, and to the great joy of Alex, it has a Pita Pit.

We left Louisiana on early Friday ... ok, we tried to leave early Friday but everywhere we went to finish up that "last little thing" something, as it always does, went wrong. We got into Kansas City late Friday night, enjoyed some beer, good food, and free live music at the Gordon Biersch in the Power and Light District. The next morning we got up early for another exciting day of driving through Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, and North Dakota, until we arrived in Fargo. It was very pretty country but it all kind of looked like this:

It was very pretty and green, but also very ... very flat. We ate at another brewery restaurant in Fargo, which was also pretty good(and they are planning to build a location in Minot in only one and a half years!), got to watch the Heat give the Celtics a piece of humble pie, and had an all in all good evening. This morning we drove through some more flat land and arrived at Minot Air Force Base via the "Magic City Gate", which had "ONLY THE BEST COME NORTH" proudly emblazoned on the top.  Finding no reason to disagree, we proceeded to the dorm room that Alex had reserved for himself, only to find that the key that they gave us did not work. Not only did it not work, but the dorm office was closed. Perfect. Luckily someone in the building helped us into his dorm, which turned out to be a little bit of a disappointment. Lucky for us, our friend from Barksdale is letting us crash with them for a little bit, until we get this whole dorm room situation figured out. Starting with tracking down the right key.  

On a side note, as soon as we got into town we stopped by the one and only Kroll's Diner for lunch where they had 2 for 1 root beer floats! Awesome! Alex was not nearly as impressed with the fare as I was, probably cause the only thing they had for him to eat was a fish sandwich and I forced a root beer float on him(TWO FOR ONE!), but I know that I will be going back. (In case you don't know about the wonderful Kroll's Diner.)

Alex was not nearly as impressed with the fare as I was, probably cause the only thing they had for him to eat was a fish sandwich and I forced a root beer float on him(TWO FOR ONE!), but I know that I will be going back. (In case you don't know about the wonderful Kroll's Diner.)

I also wanted to show you a picture of what 10 pm in Minot, ND looks like. It's kind of a crappy picture cause I didn't want to turn off all of the lights in the room, or open the window just to show you, but you get the general idea. It is very bright. 

Last but not least, wedding invites are out! I can't believe the wedding is only 2 months and 8 days away! I am extremely excited and yes, I have been having some Bridezilla moments, but hopefully they aren't too bad for those effected by my outbursts. 

Alright, I'm drawing all the shades and heading to bed. Gotta save up all that energy for unpacking the truck!

I LOVE LA

Los Angeles that is! This last week has been so beautiful and I've been having so much fun visiting the ocean and soaking up the sunshine. The drive over here was spectacular and my friend Shannon and I had a blast seeing some of the most beautiful parts of the country. Here are some pictures I took along the way, and then some.

These are pictures I took from the Carlsbad Caverns(which were incredible, in case you didn't know):

Here is the famous Barringer Meteor Crater in all it's glory ... yep there it is.... 

As you may or may not know I'm kind of a big fan of food, and eating in general. You may think that most people like food, but I guarantee you, most people do not like food the way that I like food. Well, one of my favorite shows to watch is Man v. Food. I don't know if you've seen the show, but the premise is that this guy named Adam Richmond visits cities throughout the United States and competes in the various eating challenges that the restaurants have. Our first stop was Austin, Tx, so naturally I looked up what the eating challenge there might be(secretly with the hopes of attempting it). The eating challenge in Austin was at this delicious little Mexican restaurant called Juan in a Million which specializes in breakfast burritos, tacos, and the like. The eating challenge is to eat EIGHT ... read 'em EIGHT of these bad boys shown below. What exactly is "shown below" you ask? Well, it is a heaping pile of potatoes, bacon, egg, and cheese served with 3 flour tortillas. I managed to eat one and a half tortillas filled with the delicious mixture, and I highly doubt that I was able to stuff even half of that gooey goodness into the two tortillas. It was, however, delicious, and I seriously regret not being able to grab it to go. 

Before we visited the actual Caverns, we stayed in a KOA Cabin just outside of the city of Carlsbad, and when we walked up to the Welcome Center, we found this sign. How cute is this? 

As you can tell, and as I've said, we had a super fun time on our road trip adventure. Needless to say, though, I am so excited to be home. I can't believe this is the place that I got to grow up in and this is the place that I get to call home, I am seriously so blessed. Like today, I went to the beach with a couple of my friends and we poked around in the tide pools and found some cool things. Let's have a look:

 This rock is covered in baby Sea Anemones, at least they looked like babies to me

Close up shot of the babies(Yes, I confess, I spent a good, few minutes poking at each one) 

I have no idea what that is, it looks like an alien to me ... that must be it

My friends torturing playing with sand crabs. There were so many!

STARFISH!

More sea anemones 

Isn't it beautiful? 

Well that's all for now folks. As far as wedding planning goes, I'm working on invitations and then centerpieces are next! It's creeping up so fast that I can't believe it's only like 3 months away! Eek! Better get crackin'!

Warrior Dash

So I don't know if you guys remember, but Alex and I went to Warrior Dash a few weeks ago with our friends Ryan and Jenny Russell. In case you don't remember:

Well I finally got around to washing the clothes from the Warrior Dash, after abandoning them to the patio for the last couple weeks "to dry". First, I decided to take it to the laundromat because, why would I want to wash those muddy clothes in MY washing machine? When my clothes were finished washing I peaked inside to examine the clothes, and they still had some dirt and sand on them. Disappointed with the inadequate washing job, I put the clothes in my bag to take home for a good old fashioned hand washing. When I pulled all of the clothes out of the washing machine I was surprised to see that the bottom of the washing machine was COVERED in sand. It was practically a sand box. Oops.

So then I brought it home to be hand washed, and this is what was in the bath tub AFTER that first cycle at the laundromat:

Gross right? So after that they went into our washing machine, to be soaked, pre washed, heavy duty washed, and just for fun maybe even run through the "permanent press" cycle.

Moral of the story: If you go to Warrior Dash, wear clothes that you are willing to throw away after.